City
is still quiet,
not yet ready
to accept bustle. 

Out beyond here
small towns,
home towns,
sleep on and on.

All those people
are allegedly my people.
They aren’t 
here right now.

Instead
are elsewhere;
in more desirable
lands, in their heads.

I’m not in there
with them, nor am I
in my own head. Instead
I am trying

to understand
why their peace
has never been contiguous
with my own,

trying to understand
how I do not have
dreams anything like
theirs, no shared definitions

of what awake
should mean, of what
that life
should be.